While hedge fund Pardus Capital Management is advocating that Delta set United in its sights for a merger, United chief executive Glenn Tilton has gained a reputation for being one of the biggest advocates of airline consolidation.

“We have said for the last four years that we believe consolidation is necessary for the industry, and others independently are reaching the same conclusion,” said United spokeswoman Jean Medina.

Evergreen aviation consultant Mike Boyd speculated that Delta and other airlines are doing “scenario planning regarding United Airlines because United has been perfuming itself for either a takeover or a merger.”

United’s attempt to merge with US Airways failed in 2001 after antitrust regulators raised concerns.

Since then, United has been speculated to be in merger talks with other airlines. Last year, United and Continental were reportedly in talks, after United hired Goldman Sachs & Co. to explore strategic options. The talks were reportedly spurred by US Airways’ bid to buy Delta, which was ultimately unsuccessful. United was said to have contacted Delta as an alternate merger candidate then.

“It’s a very unstable situation, and it’s not clear what will trigger it, but there is a rising sense of urgency among airline executives as a group, and sooner or later, someone will do something that causes a reaction and causes the dominoes to start to fall over,” said Port Washington, N.Y.-based airline consultant Bob Mann.

“It takes a big investor from the outside to kind of kick-start the process because the airline managements themselves, for whatever reason, have a lot of inertia,” said Alan Sbarra, principal at consultancy Roach & Sbarra.

Consolidation could mean less competition and higher fares for consumers, Boyd said.

Using data from the Dartmouth Atlas – a source of information and analytics that organizes Medicare data by a variety of indicators linked to medical resource use – we recently ranked geographic areas based on markers of end-of-life care quality, including deaths in the hospital and number of physicians seen in the last year of life.